A Day in the Life...

Our girls like to read books about animals.  Not so much story books, but the encyclopedia type books that picture all kind of different animals with facts about them, etc.  They are fascinating to my girls.  A frequently pictured animal is the Ape.  I don't like apes.  I think it stems back to some movie we watched ages ago as children about apes that flew remote control airplanes or something and ended up dying in some tragic way.  Disturbing...  I'd try to do some research into what that movie actually was, but I try to repress that memory and researching it would be counterproductive.  Anyways, yesterday morning I was doing all kind of stuff around the house with Louie on my hip.  (it's amazing how much you can get done one-handed!  If I wasn't an expert at multi-tasking I don't know how I'd ever function!).  As I was walking from the bedroom to the bathroom the image from one of those books of a mother Ape with her little baby in tow popped into my head, and I felt such love and appreciation for the fact that Louie was my little cling-on for the next...I don't know how much longer.  Sure, it's hard to tote little ones around constantly, but I'm seeing more and more that it really isn't forever, and I cherished that moment of doing every day things with my baby in arms.  The day that is over will be a sad day indeed.  Rewarding in other ways, yes, but sad. 

Louie likes to sleep face down with her head crammed in the corner of the crib...oh, and she likes to suck her fingers too!

Today in Primary I was listening to the second counselor give the lesson.  She was talking about Noah & the Ark & had cut out animals and was having the kids put the different animals in the ark.  She asked the children if they thought it was hard for Noah to get all those animals in the ark (with her cute southern accent by the way...)  After a somewhat half-hearted response from the children, she asked if they thought it was hard for their mothers to load all of them up in the family car/van?  For some reason that really struck me.  I just wanted to laugh.  Loading the girls in our car is not the most...relaxing experience.  In fact, it's pretty darn stressful!  Now I can appreciate that no matter how hard it may be for us to load the children up, at least we're not loading all the animals in the ark...no matter how much our home may feel like a zoo.

Ballet outfit...check

Necklace...check

Watch...check!
Now she's ready for a picture!

Emmy Blowing Kisses...

 And lastly, we stared chores a month or so ago, and I can't tell you what a huge burden has been eased with the girls helping out!  Yes, it was/is stressful getting them to do their chores and making sure it's done correctly, but it's so nice to not have everything fall on me.  Mainly what we do is each night after dinner we all help clear the table off and clean the dishes & floors.  The girls are also responsible for unloading the dishwasher when its full (which happens to be several times a day).  It's so nice to especially have the help with the dishes.  They are to the point now where they can put all that stuff away on their own and in the right place.  I can really see the wisdom of making sure everyone chips in in a family.  It just runs so much better.  And now at night after the girls go to bed I can actually do some stuff I want to do before going to bed myself.  Before I would spend all my time before bed cleaning. 

This is the end...